More often than he would like to admit, Roy Mustang asked himself if the advice he once had given a dismembered ten-year-old had been such a good idea. From an entire selfish perspective, of course. Edward Elric, whose personal agenda had turned out to be the key to Roy's far more critical plans, had been a wild card of spectacular dimensions and with trivial problems that somehow, inevitably, always turned into serious ones. He had turned Roy's world upside-down, slowly and subtly and unwittingly; had brought along headaches and heartaches and possibilities that Roy might or might not have gotten without the presence of that reckless, devoted boy. Even though it was one of those things that he did not like to think too much about, it had been years since Roy could have looked back and honestly have wondered what his life would have looked like without Edward Elric's presence.

Appreciation of coincidence or fate, however, was not to say that he couldn't be righteously upset with the young man's often incomprehensible relationship with common sense. The days when Roy found himself cursing Edward and his baffling combination of genius and cluelessness had admittedly been much rarer after King Bradley died and Edward somehow fulfilled his covenant with himself in manners he categorically refused to discuss upon his eventual return. The final closure to that part of Edward's life had been followed by a logical change of pace: the Fullmetal Alchemist no longer pursued the science of fairy-tales. The research he did in the name of the state these days could easily be done with the access to a well-stocked library and a safe environment for smaller experiments, and there was a limit to how many disasters he could foster when he was holed up in a laboratory in the basement of the Central Headquarters. Sometimes, Fury and Breda would talk about how strange it was that Edward was living in a house and coming to work in the office. Hawkeye would habitually remind them that his research was of national importance, and Roy would refrain from correcting her on that. As far as he was concerned, the principal consequence of Edward's new and boring life was that he, Edward's commanding officer, no longer had to fabricate logs about giving Major Elric those stern reprimands about the value of public property and the military's reputation among the common citizens.

Conveniently ignoring why it was that he never could tell the little runt to start using some of that brain they both knew he had instead of acting on the social skills of a monkey, of course. When he first suggested that the boy became a soldier, Roy could never have imagined how big a part of his world Edward would become. Edward had somehow integrated himself in Roy Mustang's life as something more than just another soldier, another subordinate, another fellow alchemist. Roy hesitated to call himself Edward's friend (and Edward would laugh rudely in the face of anyone suggesting that), but he had long since given up on denying that he cared much more about Edward Elric than what would be normal between people with histories like theirs.

The bitter truth was that Roy Mustang, ever since the day he had met Alphonse Elric's serious and indisputably human eyes, from time to time caught himself thinking that in certain ways, he'd taken on the part of the father the Elric boys never quite had had.

But it had been a while since the Elric boys were children, and it had been years since Roy last made the mistake of thinking that Edward didn't know exactly what he was doing when he got himself involved in something that on the surface seemed to be an unnecessary elaborate suicide attempt. Roy knew perfectly well that Edward wasn't an idiot, and that left him at a loss when he found himself with Edward's most incomprehensible mess yet dumped in his lap. He was used to being able to read the older Elric boy like an open book, and it was rare that the young man made the effort to disguise his motives so well that Roy was unable to see through it - and in this case, it had been motives that Roy never had been meant to narrow his eyes at at all. And Roy couldn't just ask, because Roy wasn't supposed to know, and it was vexing and more than that, it was impossible. It was an ungrateful task to be the responsible adult around other adults, and it was not made easier that Roy, born leader or not, desperately did not want to.

He spent three minutes leaning against the kitchen sink and reminding himself that he had been to war and that this little talk with Fullmetal, no matter how uncomfortable the topic, hardly could be worse than eight months of losing track of the calendar because it became impossible to tell the difference between each day of dirt and fire. When he finally conceded that the stalling was rapidly nearing the territory of "pathetic", he decided that he could at least give the boy a saucer. It took him two minutes more to locate the copper tray a girlfriend had given him for a long since passed birthday, and the coffee wasn't quite fresh when he finally put it down in front of Edward, who had been picking on the arrays stitched to a glove left on the table. Roy poured both cups and set the tray aside without a word, and then he sat down to finally meet Edward's eyes.

"Well?"

He could have spared himself that sarcastic tone, Roy thought with a sting of - was that irritation? - as Edward forced the first word. He straightened his back in an old instinct that insisted he maintained some dignity in this, although he knew that it fooled neither himself nor Edward. Edward had known exactly how serious this must be from the moment Roy had refused to answer what they needed to discuss that couldn't be said in front of Hawkeye and Breda. The fact that he hadn't asked before, or even tried to make conversation with Roy as he led him to his house, left no doubts about that.

Roy closed his eyes, exhaled heavily, and made a hopeless attempt at easing into the topic. "Have you ever thought about getting married?"

Four seconds passed before the answer came.

"What?"

"Marriage, Edward, to a woman," and Edward still looked at him as though he had grown an extra head. He ploughed on. "Settle down, have kids. A dog. Family dinners, walks in the park on Sundays."

He paused at that, partially to give Edward the chance to respond but mostly because he had not thought as far as to plan how to follow up that question. The young man in front of him seemed to go through a series of conflicting reactions and settled on wary confusion. He carefully put the glove he had been fingering back on the table.

"Are you really the person who should be talking, here?"

And Roy gave up on the subtlety. "This isn't about me. Edward - " he raised his voice as Edward opened his mouth to interrupt, "I am serious."

"What the hell - " Edward started, stopped, leaned forward to stare at Roy, "why are you asking met his? What does that have to do with anything?"

"Should I take that as a no?"

"You should take it as whatever the hell you want to take it! Why are you asking about this all of sudden?"

Edward was angry, which was not surprising, and Roy was not making any progress, and that wasn't surprising either. The exchange was one that would have been utterly surreal two weeks ago, and probably still was, in Edward's eyes. Roy was not known for his concern about the private lives of his subordinates, not even those that he considered friends; Edward was believed to hold the record of oldest virgin of the office, not that anybody was stupid enough to spread those rumors wide enough to reach him. But regardless of Edward's ignorance of the jokes concerning his sexual innocence, his indifference to the opposite gender was as little a secret to others as his hatred of certain dairy products.

For a moment, Roy resented Edward's very existence, and particularly the part where he somehow had wound up as the only authority figure that Edward sometimes could be inclined to listen to. If Edward hadn't been so prideful, hadn't been so short-sighed, if Roy hadn't been the only person who could talk sense into him (if Hohenheim had at least had the decency to put up with his wife long enough to be around to give his sons the Talk) -

But mulling over things that couldn't be changed wasn't going to move the situation at hand any further along, and Roy put down his cup with new resolve and enough force to make the china clink loudly between the two of them.

"For your own wellbeing, Edward, answer me. Is it that you prefer men?"

"Wha - " Edward gaped, then slammed a fist into a cushion on his right side, "fuck you, Mustang, I've barely turned twenty-five! I don't have to hurry about that sort of stuff, even if I wanted to which, for your information, I don't!" he lifted a hand to unconsciously rub it against a crimson cheek that would have confirmed Roy's inquiry if his far too agitated denial had not. Roy pressed on before Edward had the chance to elaborate and work himself into some choleric monologue.

"There are policies about these things - "

"I'm not going out men and I'm not planning to start going out with men, and you can shove your policies! Is this what you wanted to talk about?"

There had been a moment when Roy had entertained the ridiculous hope that he could have talked himself out of this by convincing Edward that buggery was frowned upon by the higher-ups, but the brutal shift back to the nature of this highly informal, highly confidential meeting made it clear that he had no choice but to face it head on. They stared at each other, Edward angry and embarrassed, Roy trying to regain a professional distance to Edward and Edward's private affairs while swallowing the sickening nerves he had suffered ever since Edward had agreed to follow him home for this discussion.

"Well?"

Edward's final, agitated demand rang out in the rather under-sized living room of Roy's home, and Roy closed his eyes as he stood, and looked down on his subordinate with a determination that was very much forced, and very much a final, brutal wish to say it and get it over with and get to the core of this matter and end this whole, miserable evening.

"No, that is not what this is about. What I wanted to say, Edward - " he stopped for a moment, tried to ignore his repulsion because this wasn't just any other hillbilly volunteer, this was the Fullmetal Alchemist, this was Edward Elric, and he couldn't just dismiss it as the acts of an inbred - good heaves - dimwit. "What I wanted to tell you, Edward," and Roy was a professional, Roy knew how to deal with things he didn't like, and his voice was as firm as ever as he delivered a blow that must shatter the foundations of Edward's world, "is that if you want to be affectionate with your brother, there are better places to do so than the offices after hours. Lieutenant Ross was concerned."

He had not expected the relief that followed the words. The difficult part of the evening was yet to come, but Roy had braved the core of it, spoken of the things that he knew that neither of them had ever wanted for him to know. It was with an almost absent-minded calm that he observed Edward's face freeze before him, chalky for aching seconds until Edward lifted a hand, pressed it to his mouth, and slowly started walking towards the hallway. He broke into an unstable jog halfway through the living room, and disappeared around the corner.

When he heard the muffled clank of clothed steel against tiles, Roy absently wondered how Edward, who never had been there before, had found the bathroom so easily. He carefully sat down in his chair once again as he tried not to listen too closely to the choked heaves that punctuated the irregular noise of Edward's lunch hitting the toilet bowl through the wrong route.

Fifteen minutes later, and ten minutes after the bathroom, too, had grown quiet, found Edward once again sitting on Roy Mustang's living room sofa, coffee untouched and tepid on the table in front of him, hands fisted at his knees and bloodshot eyes daring Roy to speak.

"Do you have any idea about what you are doing?"

"I'm thinking that that is none of your business, and that you can kindly butt out of our private affairs." Edward's voice was raw and low, and his eyes echoed none of the remorse that Roy had expected after his first reaction. Not that Roy could even start to understand the thought processes of Edward Elric; not that he wanted to understand what had made him involve himself intimately with his own brother. Roy had never been a man who paid particularly much attention to theoretical morals, but this went far beyond philosophical teachings and cultural prejudices. There were reasons why you didn't sleep with members of your family.

"Can I at least assume that you realise how phenomenally lucky you were that it was Maria Ross who happened to have forgotten her umbrella, and not somebody else? If it hadn't been for that woman and her astonishingly soft spot for you two, Edward, it wouldn't be me you heard this from."

"Just spit it out!" Edward snarled, leaning slightly forward as if to pin Roy with the hateful glare he was gifting him, "say what you want to say and get it over with."

He wasn't sure if Edward was being stubborn or displaying a new brand of ignorance that Roy just hadn't seen before because he had never been privy to Edward's emotional affairs. But the hostile response to Roy's weak diplomacy at least made one thing evident: this was not a penitent sinner. That made it easier to draw up his shoulders and fix Edward with a firm gaze of his own.

"Very well, I'll be frank. Even if you somehow convince yourself that there is no harm in engaging in this sort of relationship with your close family, there is no escaping that the rest of the world still will be inclined to disagree. Like it or not, Edward, you are a prominent member of the military - "

"My private life has nothing to do with my performance at work."

" - as one of the few State Alchemists who have made an overwhelmingly positive impression on the general public. What do you think would happen if this became common knowledge?"

"It won't have to be common knowledge, it's nobody's business what Al and I - "

"Lieutenant Ross and I would have to disagree, Fullmetal. Who will be the next person that happens to be somewhere they shouldn't and see something they would be better of not knowing? Falman? Gracia? Your mechanic?"

Silence stretched between them as Edward breathed through clenched teeth, refusing to yield even though he obviously had nothing to counter Roy's words with. Roy leaned backwards in his chair, took a sip of his cold coffee, and slowly spoke again.

"And that aside, on a personal level..."

"I'm not interested in hearing about this," Edward interrupted.

"I realise that, just as I realise that chances are small that you considered any of these things before starting this - affair," Edward flinched at the last word, and Roy paused to grope for a slightly more refined way of talking about a relationship so absurd that there proper words didn't exist for it. He finally gave up and continued with what he had started. "It's not healthy, Edward, neither for you nor your brother."

Edward still looked at him with a defiance completely devoid of any doubt or understanding. When he spoke, it was with slow, deliberate words. "And what, Colonel, would you know about that?"

"Enough to know that reflection isn't always your primary concern. Do you think it was custom that made this sort of thing such an abominable taboo?"

"Do you think Al and I are going to make deformed babies?"

He didn't answer the sardonic jibe. Denial, that much was evident, because he knew the Elric brothers well enough to judge the extents of their delusions. They weren't idiots, and the one sitting in front of him was making a fine effort not to listen to what Roy was trying to tell him.

"I'm not talking about physiology."

Edward rolled his eyes, then, and finally slumped against the back of the couch to cross his arms in an exaggerated show of annoyance. "Yeah, I'm lost. Would you care to enlighten me about how it is 'unhealthy' for two consenting adults to - "

"Do we know for certain about the consenting part?"

Edward was on his feet so quickly that Roy barely had the chance to register that he even had shifted from his previously relaxed posture. "Are you suggesting that I am - am - do you think I am doing anything to him against his will?"

If it had been evident before that the entire conversation had been a quiet and ultimately hopeless attempt for Edward to gain the upper hand, it was sealed in the way he lost his bearings once Roy approached the heart of the problem. And Roy, who still was doing his best to ignore the topic of their discussions, got his reasons reaffirmed in Edward's absolute refusal to consider what he was saying.

"No," he said calmly, "I just know that Alphonse's affection for you transcends everything else in his life, and that it might be difficult for him to judge the limits of brotherly love. Don't you think it is possible that he feels that after the sacrifices you have made for his sake, he owes you at least his loyalty in return?"

"Oh, fuck you!" and Edward turned around to yank his coat from where he had thrown it over the back of a chair, making his way towards the entrance with brisk, agitated movements.

Roy followed, and caught his elbow just as he reached for the doorknob. Edward whirled around and faced him with a look of the most distilled hatred he had ever been subjected to.

"Edward - " he started without getting the chance to finish. The young man yanked his arm from Roy's grip and slapped his hands away with a force that probably could have caused bruises elsewhere.

"You can be as prejudiced and disgusted and if you fucking feel like it, genuinely concerned as you want, Mustang, because I don't give a damn about what you think either way. But don't you ever make the mistake of thinking that I would take advantage of my brother!" he turned to leave, jerked his shoulder out of Roy's grip when he reached for him, and almost tore his coat when Roy too hold of one of his sleeves. When Edward reached out to free himself, Roy reached out to get a hold of his collar and pulled just enough to force him to the tips of his toes.

"I'm saying this because the heavens help me, I care about both you and your brother, Edward: this is unnatural, it is wrong, and it is harmful. Sooner or later, you will have to realise how dangerous it is to delude yourself into thinking that the two of you can live like this. I'm just praying that it won't take something serious to trigger that."

Edward didn't answer. His eyes narrowed, and he pushed Roy away with little effort. The door was slammed shut so brutally that Roy suspected that the episode had cost him a doorframe in addition to Edward's trust.

Careful investigation revealed the doorframe to have survived the encounter; the private relationship between Colonel Mustang and the Fullmetal Alchemist had not, not that Roy honestly had been expecting anything else, or felt too remorseful about it. Ultimately, it had been for the best that Fullmetal never had been too tightly integrated as a part of Roy's private and highly unofficial team of subordinates. As long as the only real connection between Mustang's office and Edward's lab was that the Colonel was the final instance to refuse or approve of Fullmetal's experiments, it didn't get too obvious that they weren't talking any longer.

Evidence of that was that it to Lieutenant Hawkeye three weeks to notice that she hadn't seen Edward around lately, even though the schedule claimed him to be present in Central. At that point, Havoc had volunteered that he'd seen him come and go, but that it was sort of odd that he never sat down to have lunch with them any longer, or at least came over to chat once in a while.

In another two weeks, Fury asked if anybody knew if Al was still in town. That was five days before Roy had left work early to take the younger sister of one of his colleagues for a walk in the fine air of the early spring and Alphonse Elric walked past them, failing to notice Roy's presence and uniform in a manner that clearly suggested that he had recognized both from a distance.

Roy ignored that, like he had ignored Edward's presence as anything else than a subordinate ever since the fruitless discussion of matters which, had they been of just about any other nature, Roy would have ignored or written off as none of his business. Ignoring it was the only thing he could do, because giving thought to the situation only served to remind him about what was going on between the walls of the tiny house that Edward had bought once it became clear that his contract with the military would be prolonged. He missed the company of both brothers, certainly, but things could not go back to the way they had been before the day Lieutenant Ross confessed her discovery and asked for his help. Roy could no longer talk to Edward without forgetting what he was supposed to say because he was too busy thinking about what he was doing at night (or rather, who he was doing it with). It was a miserable situation, but with Edward unwilling to listen to reason, there was nothing more that Roy could do.

So he ignored it, or rather, ignored Edward outside of the strictly professional. It worked just fine, except that it didn't, not really. Much as Roy might pretend for all the world - himself, that was - that he didn't care about Edward's private life, sleepless nights seemed to disagree. For a man who never had cared enough to ponder the arguments behind common morals, it was difficult to explain the repulsion bleeding from somewhere in the very core of his being every time he thought about Edward, or Alphonse, or the two of them together. Smiles and natural, everyday touches that he hadn't questioned a month previous had become enough to make him flinch recalling them now, and he knew that his silence was one of the better reactions the two might have hoped for.

When he finally admitted to himself that the attempts at forgetting it were going no-where, Roy finally resolved to do the one thing he always had ridiculed Maes for believing so firmly in:

He got a hold of Pinako Rockbell's telephone number, and talked about it.

Three days later, riots broke out south of Liore. Roy and his subordinates, being among the few surviving veterans from the first accident there, were dispatched.

It was late September when he finally was back in his office, annoyed with the Ishbar policies that never seemed to be right and the insistence of certain people that a permanent military presence was required. The latter was mostly because he was fairly certain just who these people wanted to ship out to keep the peace between the illiterate morons who thought that as long as they kept their brawls between their own tribes, they'd be out of the military's business.

It wasn't until he sat down to sort through the mountain of paperwork that had piled up in his absence that he remembered the woes he had suffered prior to the unwanted change of pace. Edward's name and title had been sloppily signed to a number of just as sloppily stamped reports, requests and invoices, and Roy thought that in one way, at least, the excursion had been a blessing. It felt distanced, now - ignorable, even, in ways that he never had thought he would be able to feel so indifferent to. When he noticed the lights being lit inside the small windows of Edward's basement laboratory, there was no hesitation when he decided to go down.

Edward was hunched over his desk in a pose so familiar that Roy couldn't help but smile - it had been very long since he had last been down here for the singular reason of Edward's company. For the first time in months, he could look at the young man without seeing his brother's shadow beside him.

"Working late?"

Edward startled, but only spared him a disgruntled glare over his shoulder before he turned back to the charts he appeared to be comparing. "So are you."

Roy walked away from the doorway and rested against the wall to Edward's right, crossing his arms and smiling easily even though he was categorically ignored. That had never been anything unnatural from Edward's hold. "I just didn't know that you were that devoted to your work, Fullmetal. I remember quite clearly that you pronounced it among your principles of life to never exit the building a second later than the clock strikes five."

"Well, it makes the time pass," Edward replied absently and wrote down a chemical formula next to a hastily sketched array, "the cat only tolerates my presence at home as long as I supply it with food. I don't care what Al says, that stupid animal hates me."

The casual mention of Alphonse didn't make Roy flinch the way it once had. He surprised even himself with the line that fell much too easily out of his mouth as Edward dipped his pen. "So why do you bother? Can't he feed it himself?"

Edward's hand stilled momentarily, before he put the pen down on the table without pressing out the excess ink. A fat drop spilled onto the table.

"Haven't you heard, Mustang?" he said in a tone that sounded much too trivial for the way his shoulders had tensed at Roy's words. He picked up the pen again and mopped up the ink with his already stained glove. "Al's in Creta."

"Creta?" Roy parroted. Edward nodded.

"Yup. The library of Rakota."

Edward continued writing, seemingly not interested in making light conversation, but then again, Edward rarely did.

"How did he even get in there? I though the monks were notoriously suspect of any outsiders."

"Our dad," Edward explained, dipping his pen again, "some father, huh? Gone for all our lives, comes back after a two-year abscence, and leaves the country after four days." He sighed, and continued, "But Al always insisted that he wasn't such a bad guy. Plus, going to that library was something like a childhood dream for him."

"From what I recall, he was certainly far more interested in keeping in touch with your father than you were," Roy said conversationally, and Edward shrugged.

"Actually, he left because we decided that you were right all along, Mustang. What we were doing was wrong and unnatural and unhealthy, not to mention a dangerous delusion about what would make us happy in the long run. Oh, and that it was really just disgusting, illegal, abnormal, and hurting the people who care about us," he paused momentarily, before he added, "Those last ones were Winry's."

And they were back in the chilly February evening, with the cold coffee and the faint smell of vomit from Edward's hair. Roy's stomach was knotted in dread, and the atmosphere, so relaxed and familial a minute ago, was once again heavy and aching. Edward had finally turned to look at him, leaning back on his left elbow which was resting on top of his notes. The way he was staring at Roy was disconcerting in the sheer indifference, and it took Roy a few seconds to remember how to speak.

"That was why he left?"

"It was quite clever, I thought," Edward said, turning slightly to poke at a miniature steam engine that seemed to serve as a paper weight. "She probably didn't do it on purpose, but cornering Al alone to snivel at him, that's a surefire way of getting your will."

"I don't believe that," Roy said, straightening and finding that his voice was firming, "Alphonse isn't that soft."

"Why, are you trying to tell me that this wasn't what you wanted?" Edward said in mock surprise, snorting. "But you're right, that wasn't it. She cried at our kitchen table for fourty minutes after I came home, and then she threatened to tell auntie Pinako and our teacher so that they could talk sense into us unless we promised that we'd 'quit it'. That was why he left."

Roy could find no words, and Edward was staring absently at the wall. "So you got it your way. I'm here, and he's not, and there's enough distance between us for anything affectionate to ruin our family."

Neither of them said anything more, and Edward turned back to his papers, stacking them together in preparation to leave.

"It was the right thing to do," Roy finally said, not moving from the spot as his eyes followed Edward, who was shelving books and putting away chemicals.

"I'm sure it was," Edward agree amiably, "I'm sure that if we just get some distance to reflect over it, we can deal with it like adults and move on. Sure, it feels really fucking unfair that after I spent half my life trying to get him back, I'm going to have to give it up now because you couldn't comprehend the concept of 'private business'. But yeah, I'm sure it'll turn out that you were right eventually."

He stopped in the doorway and shrugged on his coat, before resting a hand on the light switch. "Are you coming?"

Roy pushed away from the wall, but Edward had started walking before him. They left the building in silence, Edward's back turned to Roy the entire time. Roy, for his part, could think of nothing to say, uncertain if there really was anything he should be saying. The problem that somewhere during Roy's absence had stopped being a problem had finally found its solution without much contribution from Roy's side, but Roy wasn't relieved, and it unnerved him. Watching Edward's back and the firm steps of a man who was using contempt and faux indifference to badly conceal feelings of a far more tender nature, some emotional instinct that Roy Mustang could only be grateful never to have lost kicked in. He was being sentimental and easily affected, he had always been so fond of Edward and Alphonse both and he knew it; he told himself that it could only be that which made him feel so anxious.

He reached out for Edward's shoulder when the gates closed behind them, and Edward stopped without turning. "It is best this way," Roy said, and Edward didn't answer. Eventually, he sighed, and pulled the lapels of his coat a bit closer around his neck.

"It can't be helped. Even if I hate the cat and the cat hates me, it shares a deep and mutual love affair with Al. He wouldn't want it to starve."

Roy started walking, but didn't get very far before he stopped, turned around, and watched the back of Edward's trademark red coat trudge down the wet pavement.

Note: I only ever watched the 2003 anime and won't pretend that I know anything about the geography of the FMA universe. RakotÉ™ is/was the Coptic name of Alexandria.